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Jun 22, 2024 · When it comes to rainfall, Vancouver is often associated with being a wet city. However, contrary to popular belief, Vancouver does not hold the title for the rainiest city in Canada. With average yearly rainfall of 1,145 mm (or 45 inches), Vancouver ranks as the 9th rainiest location in Canada, behind cities like Prince Rupert and Port Alberni.
Vancouver is Canada's third most rainy city, with 169 rainy days per year. As measured at Vancouver Airport in Richmond, Vancouver receives 1,189 mm (46.8 in) of rain per year. [ 1 ] In North Vancouver, about 20 km (12 mi) away from the Vancouver airport, the amount of rain received doubles to 2,477 mm (97.5 in) per year as measured at the base of Grouse Mountain .
- Overview
- History
- The contemporary city
Vancouver, city, southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is the major urban centre of western Canada and the focus of one of the country’s most populous metropolitan regions. Vancouver lies between Burrard Inlet (an arm of the Strait of Georgia) to the north and the Fraser River delta to the south, opposite Vancouver Island. The city is just nort...
The region had long been inhabited by several Native American (First Nations) peoples when a trading post, Fort Langley, was set up by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1827 near the mouth of the Fraser River. Few people of European descent lived in the area until the late 1850s, when the town of New Westminster (now a suburb of Vancouver) was established near the site of the original fort (in 1839 the fort itself had been relocated a little farther upstream). Thousands of miners, mostly from California, flooded into the region in the 1860s, attracted by the gold rush in the Cariboo Mountains to the northeast. Besides the Scottish, who were very influential in Vancouver’s early years, Americans had a notable impact on the city. The suggestion to name it Vancouver was made by an American, William Van Horne, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway. And the city’s most-often elected mayor (nine nonconsecutive terms from 1919 to 1933), L.D. Taylor, was originally from the United States. Moreover, the first important industry in the area, a sawmill on Burrard Inlet, was owned by an American. Finally, the first major industry not reliant on local natural resources, a still-active sugar refinery, was started by an American.
Vancouver was originally a small sawmilling settlement, called Granville in the 1870s. It was incorporated as a city in April 1886 (just before it became the western terminus of the first trans-Canada railway, the Canadian Pacific) and was renamed to honour the English navigator George Vancouver, of the Royal Navy, who had explored and surveyed the coast in 1792. A disastrous fire just two months after incorporation destroyed the city in less than an hour. The city recovered, however, to become a prosperous port, aided in part by the opening of the Panama Canal (1914), which made it economically feasible to export grain and lumber from Vancouver to the east coast of the United States and to Europe. In 1929 two large suburbs to the south, Point Grey and South Vancouver, amalgamated with Vancouver, and its metropolitan area became the third most populous in Canada. By the 1930s Vancouver was Canada’s major Pacific coast port. After World War II it developed into Canada’s main business hub for trade with Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Nestled among snow-capped mountains on an ocean inlet, Vancouver has one of the most picturesque settings of any city in the world. In his 1792 journal, Captain Vancouver wrote:
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To describe the beauties of this region will on some future occasion be a very grateful task to the pen of a skilled panegyrist. The serenity of the climate, the innumerable pleasing landscapes, and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, requires only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages, and other buildings.
Its climate is marked by mild wet winters and moderately warm summers. Temperatures range from highs in the low 70s F (about 22 °C) in August to lows in the low 30s F (about 0.8 °C) in December. The city’s proximity to the water and to mountains results in constantly changing weather conditions. Rainfall is heavy in November and December, with an average of about 7 inches (about 180 mm) in both months.
The city is the industrial, commercial, and financial heart of British Columbia, with trade and transportation as basic components of its economy. Its ice-free deepwater port (on Burrard Inlet), Canada’s largest, has extensive docks and grain elevator facilities; it handles freighters, a fishing fleet, and some ferries. Major cargoes include bulk commodities (grain, coal, sulfur, potash, and petrochemicals), forest products, steel, and containers. It is also an important port for cruise ships, with Alaska as their most common destination.
Vancouver is renowned as being quite a wet city, though in actual fact out of all the major Canadian cities, it is the second driest (after nearby Victoria)! Compared to the rest of Canada, Vancouver has a very mild climate, year round, and rarely drops below freezing. Snowfall is also quite a rare occurrence in the city.
Dec 12, 2020 · Vancouverites deal with snow in the same way that they deal with rain—simply put up your umbrella and get on with life. Average temperatures and rainfall by month: November: 39 / 49°F (4 / 9°C) and 135.89 mm / 5.35 inches. December: 35 / 44°F (2 / 7°C) and 126.5 mm / 4.98 inches.
As July rolls around, Vancouver buzzes with energy–cyclists, runners, beach-goers, and city dwellers rejoice in the sun and soak in the long, warm days. Autumn Vancouver’s wet season feeds the city with life fuelling rain and fresh air.
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Nov 19, 2019 · Vancouver officially incorporated on April 6, 1886, after Canada's first transcontinental railroad reached the region. Shortly thereafter, nearly the entire city was destroyed when the Great Vancouver Fire broke out on June 13, 1886. The city quickly rebuilt though and by 1911, it had a population of 100,000.
